How Pippa Grant Revolutionized her Writing Career with a New Pen Name

Episode 007 / Romantic comedy author Pippa Grant joins Jami Albright and Sara Rosett to chat about starting over with a new pen name  as well as collaboration with other authors on a series. You can find show notes and links at wishidknownforwriters.com.

The alternate title for this episode is “Fun Places and Unusual Places to Record Your Podcast” because Jami had to record the episode from her car in the Starbuck's parking lot. (We're creating a new hashtag for just these sorts of things: #JamiStory.)

Sara’s prepping for a trip to London for SPF-Live, a writer’s conference, and the London Book Fair. She plans to visit as many stately homes/country estates/tea rooms as possible. #research #authorlife 

Jami’s feeling rejuvenated. She’s back from a writing retreat where she accomplished a lot and got to hang out with 20 writers.

In this podcast episode, you’ll discover:

• When it’s smart to use a pen names and how starting over with a new pen name gives you freedom 
• Pippa’s favorite mistake and what she learned about worldbuilding, including why--even in romance--the villain has to have a comeuppance 
• The importance of emphasizing the parts of a book that will appeal to readers when running ads
• How Pippa pivoted and created a new pen name after studying the bestseller charts and analyzing what tropes readers wanted
• Writing fearlessly and how Pippa shuts off the critical voice
• The mistake of chasing the wrong goal
• Psychology of fandom
• Pippa’s collaboration with three authors to create the Bluewater Billionaire series, including the nitty gritty details of plotting and planning the series
• How the group marketed through hashtags to encourage readers to share their stories before the series released
• Pippa’s big gamble of starting a new pen name and the risk of investing money in an unknown quantity
• Pippa’s potential side hustle as a “pun” title whisperer
• How Pippa’s husband helps her in her writing business 

Genres discussed include contemporary romance, romantic comedy and cozy mystery.

Links: 

Pippa Grant https://pippagrant.com 

Jennifer Barnes https://jenniferlynnbarnes.tumblr.com/post/136121504974/fiction-fandom-and-using-the-term-mary-sue-as

Bluewater Billionaires series

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to where we focus on how authors found success, looking at strategies that have taken them to the top of the bestseller charts, as well as what they've learned from their mistakes. Because being an indie author is more than knowing the latest marketing trend. It's about being innovative and creative and learning from your mistakes. Your co-hosts, Jamie Albright and Sarah Rosette, couldn't be more different. In fact, they're a study in contrast. However, despite all of their differences, they agree that sharing what they wish they'd known, both the good and the bad, is the key to moving forward. Let's get to the show.

Sara 0:43

Welcome to the Wish I'd Known Then podcast.

Jami 0:45

I'm Sarah Rosette. And I'm Jamie Albright. And today we have Pippa Grant on this show. And oh my gosh, it is such a fun interview.

Sara 0:56

It is.

Jami 0:56

Yeah, Pippa's hilarious anyway. And uh I actually had to record the show in my car because we my our internet was out and I had to go to Starbucks and pirate their internet sitting in the parking lot. So the sounds great.

Sara 1:17

Who knew that the car was like the place to record?

Jami 1:20

Exactly.

Sara 1:21

So it actually worked out really well. We were a little worried that uh it might not work at all. But yeah.

Jami 1:27

No, I thought it was it turned out great. Yeah.

Sara 1:29

Yeah.

Jami 1:29

So and Pipp Pippa, um, this in this whole interview, besides being fun, is just really good. Pippa's one of the smartest people I know. And she talks about how she kind of reinvented herself with a pen name, and uh, which I thought is to me was so encouraging because I know she was very discouraged before she started the pen name, and it just goes to show it's never over. As long as you don't quit, it's never over. And I just love that. Uh, she also talks about collaborations and uh some of the ones that she's done, uh, specifically the Blue Water Billionaire series. And yeah, it was just a great interview.

Sara 2:11

Yeah, we talk a lot about rom com and um how she learned um to sort of figure out exactly what her readers want, and then how she went all in on the new pen name. And I mean, she went all in. Some people kind of start a pen name on the side, but I think she really focused on that like a laser and she did really well.

Jami 2:32

She did. She did, and it has paid off, yeah, in big ways. So, what's going on with you this week?

Sara 2:38

We've got big news. Yeah, I'm getting ready to go to London. I'm gonna go over there for the um SPF Live, which is a one-day event, and then after that I'm going to the London book fair, uh, gonna see what happens. I've never done a book fair like that, so I think that'll be interesting.

Jami 2:54

That would be fun.

Sara 2:55

Yeah, so I'm going a couple days early, going to go visit as many uh country homes as I can over there for research, research purposes, of course, take lots of photos and you know, just kind of uh like fill the well for more uh 1920s books. So that's what I'm and I'm and you know, we'll do lots of other sightseeing and stuff and eating out. So it'll be a lot of fun.

Jami 3:18

That will be fun. So the SPF Lab, that's the self-publishing formula, Mark Dawson's uh event that he's putting on, right?

Sara 3:26

Yeah, it's just a one-day event, and this will be the first one that they've had, and I can tell from just what I'm seeing in groups that people are so so excited about. Yeah, I don't think there's really been an event like that in England or even in really Europe. I think they'll do 20 books.

Jami 3:41

Yeah, I think they did 20 books Edinburgh, uh but yeah.

Sara 3:45

Yeah, so I think people are just gonna be like over the moon to meet other writers. That's always fun.

Jami 3:50

Yeah, it is fun. It is fun. Well, I just got back from a writing retreat and uh at Orange Beach in Alabama, and that was very fun. Um, hanging out with more more than 20 writers, it was awesome. So I'm feeling very rejuvenated and I was productive, and that's always awesome. So happy about that.

Sara 4:16

Yeah, someday we'll have to do a podcast about writing retreats, like maybe how to plan one.

Jami 4:21

Yes, I love them. I love them. They I I really do get so much done when I'm at a writing retreat, but then again, I'm an extrovert, and so even if I'm not talking to people, just being around people energizes me in my writing. So, but I I know a lot of ex I mean introverts that really love writing retreats too.

Sara 4:41

So yeah, I think just getting out of your normal routine and just focusing only, being able to focus only on writing or marketing or whatever you're working on, that has huge advantages. Yeah, so yeah. Cool. I'm glad you had a good time.

Jami 4:54

Yeah, and I think I've gotten a few um more interviews lined up, so that'll be fun. Yeah.

Sara 5:00

So I think we have a good roster of upcoming guests. Yeah, that's we do.

Jami 5:05

We do. So speaking of that, let's get on to Pippa's interview. Sounds good.

Sara 5:10

All right. We're really excited to have Pippa Grant with us today. Hi, Pippa.

Jami 5:15

Hi, Pippa, hi.

Sara 5:17

So why don't you start us off and tell us a little bit about um kind of about you and how you got into writing?

SPEAKER_04 5:23

Okay. Um, I am Pippa Grant. I write romantic comedies that will make tears stream down your leg. And I I started writing, like when I was eight years old, I started writing. I decided I wanted to be Beverly Cleary, but my parents started laughing at the books I wrote, and I didn't realize that was a good thing. So I put all the writing on hold until after I graduated college, and then I picked it back up and I've been writing since then, and I'm not gonna tell you how many years it was, but I do feel like I have achieved a certain level of mastery in my craft that I still manage to screw up because we all get in our own way sometimes. Yes, exactly.

Sara 6:01

Yes, and that's the podcast. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 6:04

Right.

Jami 6:05

So um tell us what genres you write in, and you have two pen names, right?

SPEAKER_04 6:12

I do have two pen names. Um, both of my pen names are contemporary romance, romantic comedy. Um, I like funny. The minute I read Janet Ivanovich when I was I was finishing college, and I was like, this is my jam. And so I binged everything funny I could find. I love jokes, I love to laugh. Um, and so I will sometimes sacrifice the romantic part of my stories to get to the funny parts of my stories. And I do have two pen names. I started writing initially as Jamie Farrell, and I call that my learning pen name. I learned everything I could about publishing while I was publishing as Jamie Farrell. And then a couple of years later, after I had made a lot of mistakes and also done a few things right, some on purpose and some accidentally. Um, I think that's that's how it is, right? You have on purpose and accidental mistakes, and you have on purpose and accidental things you do right.

Jami 7:04

So hence the name of this podcast. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 7:08

It's the whole premise right there. Exactly. So I I started over and I had started writing steamier, and I needed to separate the fact that my husband's office knew that I wrote romance novels from the fact that I was now writing romance novels with super steamy hate sex scenes and elevators, and I didn't want his office talking about that. So they knew about the Jamie Farrell pen name, so we had to keep the Pippa Grant pen name separate. And considering the level of steaminess is so different in the two of them, and the level of profanity as well, it makes sense to keep the two separated.

Jami 7:43

I agree. I think that was a really smart move. Even if you didn't have the husband thing as a factor, it was still so smart to keep those things separate.

SPEAKER_04 7:52

And you know, it was fun starting over because there were no reader expectations. Right. If I would have put out another Jamie Farrell book and I had put out a book that was super steamy and super sexy, and it had like F bombs dropping, like every three lines, my fan base would have totally revolted. And going in as Pippa Grant with no association with Jamie Farrell, it it was in some ways I really didn't like it because I felt like I was hiding who I was. But in other ways, you know, like authors start over all the time. And the number of people who find out that you're linked if you don't tell them is so minimal. And the number of people who get upset about it is even smaller. Um, like I think there's a line, you know, so long as you don't go around being all like Jamie Farrell says Pippa Grant is the best thing ever, or Pippa Grant says you have to read Jamie Farrell all the time, I think you're fine. Although I will say that I think that my fan base does cross between the two pen names now that I'm public about it. Yeah. Um but yeah. If I recommend a romance book, I'm gonna recommend so many more romance novels besides my own first.

Jami 8:57

Yeah, exactly. But and you won't say this, but I will. You you pivoted this so so so so smartly. She took time, she did not jump into anything without having a plan. She really revolutionized her own career because she because of her frustration, but also because she was smart and she waited until she had everything the way she wanted it.

SPEAKER_04 9:25

I did, I did, and I knew I couldn't do it on my own. I hired people who could help me with the branding and the marketing um and who would help me open my eyes and take leaps that I wouldn't have made on my own. Right. But I yeah, do you want me to talk about that? If you want to, it's up to you, yeah. About the decisions I made. I mean, I made a some of them. Well, do you want to start with my mistakes or do you want to start with what I did right? Well, let's let's go with what's what was your big your first big success?

Jami 9:50

Let's do that.

SPEAKER_04 9:52

Um, my first I call Mr. Mikati, the first PIPA grant book, my first big success, and that's not true. I think I've had different levels of success. So that was that book was a success because I didn't lose money on it. Um Rockaway Bride was my sixth PIP a grant book, and that book was my first success because that was the first first month that I turned a profit that I didn't need to turn around and invest all of my profit into advertising the next month to make it bigger. I had hit a sustainable profit level that would allow me to have a paycheck, basically, because it had been all growth up to that point. But that was six books in. That was six books in, six months and six books in. Six months, eight months, yeah. Yeah. And it it was, it was, it took a while to get there. And then things exploded beyond my wildest dreams about seven months after that, when my ninth or tenth book came out. I don't even remember which number it is. Um, but Charming as Puck came out and it just shot up the charts and it stayed high on the Amazon charts. And I I kept staring at it, going, Who's whose book is this? Whose career is this? Because this isn't mine.

Jami 10:58

I remember I remember when that happened because I had a book about to come out, and I couldn't even concentrate on the stuff I needed to do for my book because I kept watching your book going, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, it was so exciting.

SPEAKER_04 11:10

It was really exciting. It was crazy and fun, and then it creates a whole other like level of pressure because you think, oh, if I don't replicate this, I'm a failure, which is not true. It's not true, but those are the lies we tell ourselves. They are, they are the lies for sure.

Sara 11:25

Yeah, we tell ourselves a lot of lies, so yeah, hopefully we can we do help us not do that, yeah.

Jami 11:32

Kind of to ourselves or to ourselves. Once I get my uh head straight, we're gonna do a whole podcast on this, but I'm not there yet. So but I'm working on it because it's it's a big deal. It's a really big deal.

Sara 11:45

Yeah, mindset is huge, yeah. Yeah. So um so what do you wish you had known about writing and craft?

SPEAKER_04 11:53

Like oh, my favorite mistake ever. Um, I decided that I was gonna write a series of books. This was under my Jamie Farrell pen name, set in the most marriedest town on earth. Yes, married-est town. Most married est town on earth. And they were gonna have this huge knot festival, like K-N-O-T, not not N-O-T. Yeah, huge knot festival, celebrating weddings, people come from all over to elope. They have these things called the husband games. I was playing off of the Hunger Games, and it was totally hilarious, right? Like the setup itself, you're like, that would never happen. And I'm like, well, that's a quintessential Jamie Farrell or Pitagram book. It would never actually happen. Right, exactly. Um, and I made my heroine, a divorced person, who just didn't fit in town, and that was the worst mistake I could have made. Because when it comes to writing, it was the first book in the series, and no one liked the town, and the villain didn't get her come up in. Yeah, they love that. Yeah. Yeah. So getting people to move from the first book to the second book was super hard because even though the second book, the second book did really well, it had a book bub about two years ago, and it just shot way up the charts and it kept there. Was the book bub um the bubble effect? The halo thing. Yes, that's the word I'm looking for. There was the halo effect for about six weeks until the next to last book in my misfit brides series came out. It wow it carried it for six weeks, and that was off of book two in the series. But book one does not have that kind of impact. And so it's hard. I mean, if you start a series with a book that tanks, if you kiss the series, goodbye.

Jami 13:35

Yeah, because it's hard to well, especially in this environment with KU. If you're in KU, but even if you're not in KU, I mean, if you can't get read through, you're sunk. Yes. There are too many books for people to put your book down for to go read.

SPEAKER_04 13:53

Yes, absolutely. So it it's it's little things I learned about world building and the community that you build inside of a book, and always give the villain their comeuppance. Even if it's hysterically funny, like you need to know that that villain learned a lesson by the end of the book. And you know, that series does well enough on its own. Since I've linked my two pen names, the Jamie Farrell books, the Misfit Brides books, and the Officer's Ex-Wives Club books, those have held their own, um, making more money than they did before, getting more read-through, getting more fans. But I can tell you, my newsletter list is not growing from those. Yeah, yeah.

Jami 14:28

I don't know. Yeah, it's so funny because it's the third third book in my series. I sent it to my betas, and I mentioned the manager, her man, this girl's manager. He's literally in a chapter and a half, and he's not a good guy, but he's only in the first chapter and a half. He leaves, we never hear from him again. And every one of them said, he why didn't he get he bad things needed to happen to him? He didn't just come up and so I had to go back in and rewrite that because every one of them said it. And you know, if every one of them says it, you know you gotta do it. And then on the reviews, people are like, Oh, I'm so glad he got his. And yeah, I I it never even occurred to me that that needed to be a big deal.

SPEAKER_04 15:12

It's funny, you don't think about romance readers being bloodthirsty, but sometimes when there's a villain involved that hurts your hero or your heroine, you need to make sure that villain pays. Yes, exactly, exactly.

Jami 15:25

So, what do you what about marketing? Like, what do you wish you'd known about that when you started?

SPEAKER_04 15:31

I wish I had known about Facebook ads earlier. Yeah, it was January of 2015 when I took a good hard look at what I had been doing. I I first published in August of 2013. And so for a year and a half, I had been struggling to do organic outreach. Um, I had even gotten a book bub on that book, and it was good, but it wasn't good enough to hit a list. And it I took a good hard look and I was like, if I want to reach new people, I have to pay to reach new people. And it turned out I had a natural knack for picking an audience and for you, yeah, and for yeah, picking an audience is huge, and just for picking up on the little tidbits about the book that would appeal to people. I think I think the first ad I put up was right before Super Bowl Sunday, and it said something like, just wait until you get to the armadillo scene. And I put it up with a picture of my cover and I boosted it for like $10 a day for five days. And you know, I didn't know if I was gonna see my $50 back. And almost immediately my sales shot up, and it wasn't like I spent $10 to make $40. Oh wow. And I said, Oh, well, if I'm gonna spend $10 to make $40 more than I was making the day before, then maybe tomorrow I'm gonna spend $20 on ads. And yeah, if I had figured that out sooner, I think I could have built an audience sooner, but I don't know that it would have impacted the books that I wrote. And I I really think that in my Jamie career that that steered that ship with the books I wrote and how quickly I was able to put them out. And yeah, I mean sometimes I would go three months between releases, and sometimes I would go 18 months between releases. Yeah. I had small children, and we moved a few times in those early years.

Sara 17:18

So sometimes you just can't you can't do the the rapid release, and sometimes you have to adjust, but you were really smart to look at things and go, oh, this isn't working, what else can I do? Instead of like keeping on doing the same thing.

SPEAKER_04 17:31

Well, I it was that was honestly Pippa Grant was born because Jamie Farrell burnt out. Yeah.

Jami 17:39

Up from the ashes, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:42

Um, my Jamie Farrell books never put me in the hole, but they never made me more than three or four thousand dollars in a single year either. And that's a that's a lot of hours away from my family dedicated to something just purely for the love of it. And like, if that's what somebody wants, like more power to them. If that's what makes you happy, embrace it. But for me, I I wanted to know that I was contributing to my family's finances. And yeah, so several years of not really seeing anything take off, combined with looking at what was trending on the charts and really doing an analytical look at what is it that people want and embracing tropes, like that that turned my career around. Yeah, yeah.

Jami 18:21

I agree. And and there's nothing wrong with wanting a piece of the pie at all. There's not, there's nothing wrong with it. So yeah, yeah.

Sara 18:28

I always wanted I always wanted writing to be my job, you know. It was like that was a a dream for years, but now that you know it's possible to kind of tailor my writing so that that's more more than possible. So yeah, that's cool.

SPEAKER_04 18:44

It's really amazing to be able to make it work.

Sara 18:46

Yeah, it is. Yeah. So um, what assumptions did you make at the beginning of your writing career? And then looking back, did they turn out to be right or wrong?

SPEAKER_04 18:56

Oh, I thought that if I just put a book up and I submitted it for a few awards and I finaled in something that the money was gonna pour in.

unknown 19:03

Oh yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:06

And it doesn't work that way, right? It doesn't. Sometimes. I've been writing since before indie publishing was a thing. So like the early 2000s, when you had to query agents and editors, and you know, you would write an entire book and know that you might have to just shelve it. And there was no hope, no life. It wouldn't exist if nobody wanted it. And so it was it was good to be able to just take that leap. And but I did uh you hear all the success stories and you don't hear about the people who struggle, even with good stories. I mean, my first book was a finalist in what was it, the National Reader's Choice Awards that the Oklahoma RWA chapter has put on for years, and that was like super, super inspiring. And my second book got uh Starred Publishers Weekly Review, but they they still didn't sell. Yeah, exactly.

Jami 19:56

They didn't know anything about marketing. I know. I was on the Six Figure Author podcast the other day, and they read my bio, and I have in there a multiple award winner, and when they read it, I just sort of cringed. I was like, I need to take that out because nobody cares. Nobody cares that I'm a multiple. I mean, it just nobody cares. So I didn't take that out. But because they that's not what matters anymore. What matters is still be proud of it though, because it's awesome and amazing. Okay, good.

Sara 20:24

But I think it doesn't matter, but you're saying that readers really don't care.

Jami 20:28

Really readers don't care, they just want a story, and that's what Pippa gives her readers. She gives her readers exactly what they want, and that is just so brilliant and has paid off for her big, big time. And um, I think that if our listeners are wanting to get take anything away from Pippa's career and example, that's it. She figured out who her readers were and she gives them exactly what they want.

SPEAKER_04 20:52

Well, I think I think fearlessness is a big part of that too. Yes, if I may. Um no, absolutely. When I wrote my first Pippa book, like I said earlier, there were no expectations. There was no assumption that it had to have this or it had to have that. It was just the book that I wanted to write the way I wanted to write it, but I added in elements that I knew would make it marketable. So instead of writing a story about two people who hated each other, I wrote a story about two people who hated each other and had to work together. And he used to be her brother's best friends. And so I troped it up. Oh, yeah. And you know what? That made it easier to market, which is something I never figured out when I was writing my Jamie books. I always said, Oh, my fourth misfit bride book sells so much better because that's a fan favorite heroine. And she is, but it's also the one that you sit down and you go, Oh, it's about a virgin, her Playboy boss battling for control of a bakery, and you're like, Oh, you know what that story is in just a few sentences. Yes, yes. My first PIPA book that broke out was Rockaway Bride. The tagline for that is literally a rock star kidnaps a runaway bride. Like you Like the combination is like 17 tropes there, right?

Jami 22:06

That's that's how the my first book was. If I needed it, I mean I didn't really know I was doing it, but I was really just trying to create conflict, but I just threw in another trope. Like, let's do this. Yes, because you had the rock star and the bride too. Oh yeah. There was a lot, hey, you know, for enemies to lovers, opposites attract. I mean, it was all in there, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:28

All of it. Yeah. Yep. No, it's good. And you threw in the single dad, and I threw in the the runaway part. No, wait, they were both runaway. I don't even remember what the road trip. Mine was a road trip.

Jami 22:42

I think that I think in that book too, the fact that they were both running away was so I think that made him so uh likable. And uh I think that's what one of the reasons your readers really, really loved him. Because he is lovable in that book. He is because he's also running away and he's a little clueless, and you love that too. Yeah, in the best way, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 23:06

That moment when they have that light bulb moment and they say, Oh, she's the one I want. You know, Jennifer Barnes would call that an item on my ed list. Yes, yeah. That just makes me light up. Yeah, yeah.

Sara 23:19

So so I have a quick question about tropes coming from the mystery world. So could there be a series about like runaway grooms? Because runaway brides is a big one, right?

SPEAKER_03 23:31

Jamie's like, dibs.

Jami 23:35

I don't know though. It would be hard because it would be hard. Because you don't want them to be unlockable. You know, that it that's one reason I stopped. I've only got four runaway brides. I am gonna ride a few more, I think, but I kind of got to the point where if one more bride runs away, nobody's gonna like her. Like I can't I I stopped having reasons for people to like her because she was running away from a wedding. So it's hard.

SPEAKER_04 23:59

I think if they're properly motivated, that's gonna be a really good series. The the trick is to make them properly motivated.

SPEAKER_06 24:05

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 24:05

But I think that's the trick with every character across all genres. You either have to make them properly motivated or you have to make the reader think that they're properly motivated. Right, right. And I don't think all genres have the requirement that you have to like the characters you're reading about as much as romance does, but yeah, at least be relatable and logical.

Jami 24:23

Right. Yeah, because like mystery, you can have a lead that people, I mean, like Sherlock Holmes, not not everybody likes Sherlock Holmes. He's you know, he's not always likable, but you you're intrigued by him.

Sara 24:37

Yes, it's the question I think that pulls you along. And if you like the main character, that's great. But you know it's not as essential.

SPEAKER_06 24:47

Yes.

Sara 24:47

I mean, it's important that you are interested in what's happening, and your question is like, well, who did it, why did they do it, how did they do it? And then the like ability is is like a bonus, yeah, you know.

Jami 25:00

So um what do you look back on and think that was not worth my time?

SPEAKER_04 25:10

No, I feel like I'm gonna hurt somebody's feelings. Um no names. You know, I I jumped into a couple anthologies thinking that those were going to make us hit the USA Today list. Yeah. And I thought that that was a really solid goal that I should have those letters behind my name. Um, and I was never in an anthology that hit a list, but I think that that was the wrong goal to be chasing. I really feel like the list isn't the important part. The important part is always writing a story that will enable a fandom. I I might worship at the altar of Jennifer Barnes if you haven't heard her speak. Oh, she's so good. She's amazing. She does, she talks about the psychology of fiction and the psychology of fandom and what it takes to get into people's heads and really give them that story that is going to resonate with them so much that they can't stop talking about it, can't stop thinking about it, and want to go find other people who love it just as much as they do. And, you know, really, I that's why I that's the core of why I write. And so chasing things like bestseller rank, and it's easy to sit here and say it doesn't matter having reached it. And that's that's always bothered me because I've heard other people say the same thing for years. Like it doesn't really matter. But you know, the thing that I love the most is when I get those reader emails that say, like, your books touched my lives, your books brought me joy, and that coupled with being able to make a living at my writing has been just it's amazing. It's amazing.

Jami 26:52

Well, speaking of something that was worth your time, that was kind of a collaboration, you've just recently done um a Blue Water Billionaire series with Lucy Score, Claire Kingsley, and Katherine um Nolan, right? Yes, yes, and um that has been amazing. You want can you tell us a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_04 27:12

Oh, we love the Blue Water Billionaire series. Um, I was I was chatting with Claire and Lucy and Catherine one day. I have this habit of ranting about things that I can't really fix or do anything about. And I was like, I'm so tired of male billionaires, their own Ben. Why can't the women be billionaires? Women are strong and powerful and we can make money too, darn it. And that's my little rant in chat um turned into Lucy saying, okay, we're gonna write a related world series and it's all gonna be lady billionaires and they're gonna be best friends. And the next thing we know, like it was on the calendar, and we all had plans for writing a group of four women, and we wanted their friendship to be central to things because I I think women underplay the value of friendships in their lives. Yeah, and it's it's so easy to see, like it gets publicized so much more when you see the cattiness, and it's it's easy to forget, like at the core, like we all just want to be accepted and loved, and so I wanted to see more of that because I I like the idea of having four friends who are powerful in their own right, who don't need a man, and you know, any man who is going to win himself a female billionaire for a wife, that man is gonna have to be really, really hot stuff. It's a true in his own way, yeah, right, and not in like the fake masculine way, but in the like actually, like he knows who he is, he knows who he wants, and he can match her and be her partner. Right. And yeah, and not mind if the power dynamic is shifted at all. And so we did. We launched this idea to do the Blue Water Billionaires. We wanted to do it in Miami because, well, frankly, we planned it in winter time. We all live in areas where we're like, we're gold. Um, but it's also it's fun, it's hot, it's steamy in Miami, there's bright, vibrant colors, there's there's just a vibe, you know, of happiness. Um so we set it in Miami. We built a whole neighborhood where the four of them could have their own mansions next door to each other, and they all did their own individual things to become billionaires. And most of them were self-made. Mine wasn't. Um, with three self-made billionaires in the group, I was like, I'm gonna take the one who's like the crazy heiress who nobody takes seriously, and we're gonna have fun with her. Yeah. Um, and like naturally, because she was the crazy heiress that nobody takes seriously, it was like, well, what would you do with a man in this c situation? You would give him a baby. So I made her inherit a baby. There you go. Um, but it was it was really it was fantastic and it was empowering. And we were not the first people ever to write lady billionaires. There are other lady billionaires out there. We just feel that they're underrepresented, and we wanted to normalize women in powerful positions and make it so that they're more relatable. And like I want my daughter to think that she could grow up to be a billionaire mogul someday. Right. Like that would be amazing, right? Provided that's what she wants.

Jami 30:07

I know, exactly. Well, I think that I think another thing you guys did was you created a community around these books. Like you created these hashtags, and then people would in each of your groups would comment on their hashtags, and the hashtag fierce ones like made me cry. I sat one night for probably two hours and just read through these hashtags and and you balled. And you balled, yeah. And it was before the books even came out. So that just create like all of a sudden your readers now identify with these characters that they haven't even read yet.

SPEAKER_04 30:46

Yeah, and they were sharing all of their personal stories about how they've been fierce AF or fearless AF or like fancy AF AF being an acronym that we get. No, it was. It's amazing because you don't you don't realize the struggles that your readers have every day and how much they need this escape of being in a book world until you see them like having the bravery to stand up and say, Yes, this means a lot to me, and I'm fierce because I have overcome blah. And oh my gosh, I was right there with you. I was crying too. Yeah, I had to walk away at some point. Yeah, we can't see.

Jami 31:27

So, but that was just really, really, really smart. And I felt like that um and the way you guys put it out too, how long did it take you to write them?

SPEAKER_04 31:36

Um, oh gosh, I think that we we first started, we hatched the idea and started having meetings maybe last March or April, and we all knew roughly what we were gonna write. Um and I finished I finished writing my book about the first of September, roughly. Mine had to go to narrators, it didn't come out till November. Um, but it did. It came out in audio at the same time, so there had to be that lead time. But yeah, I think that by September 15th, all of us were done, and Lucy's launched September 27th or so. So and then it was what every three weeks or every two weeks? It was every two weeks.

SPEAKER_03 32:20

Two weeks. Every two weeks we had a launch. Yeah.

Sara 32:23

So I know I'm just asking because I know people will be curious. So tell us like about like the behind the scenes, like like how did you coordinate the storytelling and then the planning and the launch? Because it sounds like this is like a huge project.

SPEAKER_04 32:36

Oh, it was, it was a big project, and we all felt like we went through four back-to-back book launches all at once. It was crazy, it was fun. And it's been it's been two months since my my book launched, and I was the last one. So I feel like we've had some breathing room. But there was we had to plan out things like um where it was going to be, what the basic elements in the community were gonna be, so that we could all write our books because we were overlapping. She got her book finished first, and she was the first to launch. So she did the majority of the extra, like putting up like hanging the pictures in the house. And so reading her book gave me a really solid feel, not just of the whole community that we had just conceptualized, but it made it concrete. And she also gave me a glimpse into my own heroine, which I did. Yeah, but a glimpse at everybody else's heroines too. So I needed to read her book before I could write mine. And we all discussed like plot elements and who our heroes and heroines were going to be, and which elements needed to appear in every single book. So all of the books were based around this Blue Water Enclave, the community that's shaped like a women's woman's reproductive organs. It's awesome. Like our island has phallopian tubes. I adore it. We all all of our all of our billionaires had a house on uh on one of the ovaries. So it was a lot of philosophy. Um but we all knew we were gonna put the three-legged alligator named Steve in it, and that he had a prosthetic leg. We all knew that um that Claire's heroine, Cam, drove a golf cart that had been souped up, and she was an aerospace engineer, so she made her golf cart more aerodynamic and fun, and she loved um, she loved 80s music. And we knew that Catherine's heroine was the hippie girl who had who was a vegan and believed in like taking care of everything, the whole entire world, and that she was gonna get a motorcycle riding hero, yeah, and that he was gonna be gruff and rough, and we knew enough about each other's stuff we could we managed to write it sort of concurrently when it came to Catherine's book, my book, and Claire's book. But we were able to pass back and forth, like, okay, I have this scene where all four of the women are together at Drag Queen Brunch, which was another I love Drag Queen Brunch. Yes. Loved all four of our Drag Queen Brunch scenes, and in all four of our Drag Queen Brunch scenes, our lady billionaire sat there and spied on four romance novelists who would get together for plotting. Oh, that's funny. Love it. So we put ourselves in the in the book. I love it. Yes, that's awesome. Yeah, and we would we would pass them back and forth and say, is this what your heroine would say? Is this how your hero would talk? Is this what your character would do? And we were all open to corrections and go shifting and moving in different directions if we hadn't captured everything authentically enough. So it was, it was a it was a big project. And you know, none of us have enough reading time these days. And so all of us acknowledged that we had the best time ever, and we loved doing that project. And it worked really well. The books, like each one fed into the next one, fed into the next one. And at the end of the day, after mine came out, um, I had never seen my rank do what it did on a graph because usually you know it will spike and then it will come back down a little and then it'll even out and slowly go back up to wherever it's supposed to be. Yeah, this time it peaked on launch, it peaked so high that I hit the Amazon charts for the most sold book that was awesome. So that is fantastic. Yeah, it was it was crazy, and you know, we haven't sat down and done the post post-mortem. Yeah, we haven't done that yet. We need to um just to see how it was and to see if this model of doing a joint world series is something that is worthwhile overall for everybody's time. Right. Um, most of us were roughly at the same level when we launched. Um, Catherine's not quite at the same level, and she saw like the greatest month of her life, and it was amazing to just to watch her interacting on social media as her book was hitting like higher and higher and getting read through to her. Because you all books in the series.

Jami 36:54

Did you you all hit the top 25, right? And three of you hit the top 10, right?

SPEAKER_04 37:03

I know we all hit, I think, the top 16. Yeah, I think Catherine peaked at 16. And I know Claire and I definitely hit the top 10, and I don't remember if Lucy hit it or if she just flirted with it. But it I can't remember either, but yeah, but it was it was an amazing, amazing launch. That's just it was fabulous.

Sara 37:23

It sounds like that was uh one of our questions is what's the biggest gamble you've taken in your writing career? It sounds like that was a gamble that maybe paid off, or would you is there another one that you I don't I don't know that that was actually much of a gamble of the four.

SPEAKER_04 37:41

Three of the four of us had really well-established um audiences at that point, and that that's part of why we wanted to do the lady billionaires. I mean, we looked at ourselves and we said, if this tanks, it's okay. None of us is going to hurt from it. Right. But if this succeeds, then we have used our collective power for the greater good. Yeah, exactly. Oh, I think the biggest it's hard to say what the biggest gamble would be. I mean, in some ways it was launching the Pippa Grant pen name.

Sara 38:11

Yeah, I wondered if you'd say that.

SPEAKER_04 38:13

I put a lot of money into starting the Pippa Grant pen name, and I didn't know if it was going to pay off. I had never tried Kindle Unlimited before. I still to this day am like when I think about being all in in Kindle Unlimited, because I I don't like the idea of Amazon having a total monopoly over the book world. Um because of I think we all feel that way. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But at the same time, I have children who need to go to college. Yeah. Um and if other people are going to be in there putting up their books, and you know, sometimes people will do things in their own work lives that I don't agree with. Like, you know, you saw we saw the the page stuffing scandal that ended in what was it, the summer of 2017 or 2018 when Amazon started pulling down all kinds of things. And I I don't feel like that, I don't feel like those books had respect for their audiences. I felt like that was a money grab. That's what it felt like, whether it was or not. I I can't say, but that's what it felt like. I didn't feel like a lot of those books that I was reading samples of were quality books. And if there are gonna be people reading in Kindle Unlimited, I think they need quality books, and so I'll be there. Yeah, I agree. So offer them quality books.

Jami 39:31

So have you ever made a m or made what you thought was a mistake, but it turned out to be a good thing? Probably. We'll give you a minute.

SPEAKER_04 39:41

Well, you know, at this point, I feel like every mistake I've made has been a learning lesson. And so even the mistakes where I lost a lot of money doing something. I mean, there have been um there have been marketing things that I've tried where I've spent more money than I should have and it's failed, but I've learned, you know, take it as a lesson and say, okay, so I'm not gonna do that again. Right. Or I will I had the best success I had had to date when I launched Rockaway Bride in the summer of 2018. And then I followed it up with a book Hot Air, and it opened with the hero and the heroine in a hot air balloon, and I thought that was hilarious, but hot air is spelled H-E-I-R, and nobody got the pun. And it just wasn't a title and a book that ever took off, which was kind of ironic considering the title. And honestly, like Jamie, you'll back me up here. I released a book this summer called Master Baker, and it was people did not get that title when they read it.

Jami 40:49

Right, didn't we? Yeah, it was like three weeks later. And I just happened to be on Amazon looking and I went, Master Baker, Master Baker, my standing there, and I said, you know what she did. He said, I got it the first time he told me that was the name three weeks ago. And I messaged him and I was like, I just got it.

SPEAKER_04 41:12

So yeah, I think my biggest mistake might be considered like using puns when I shouldn't in titles.

Sara 41:19

So you need to hire yourself out to cozy mystery writers because our titles are all about puns, you know? And it's it's totally.

SPEAKER_04 41:30

I have people that I brainstorm titles with and they'll throw out something, I'll be like, I love it, I love it, and I can't use it because it's too punny and people won't get it. Yeah.

Sara 41:40

Yeah, that could be your little side hustle, is like the title whisperer.

SPEAKER_06 41:48

That would be awesome.

Sara 41:50

Yeah. So is there anything that you've stopped doing throughout your career?

SPEAKER_04 41:55

Maybe you would I don't know if you're still writing your first series under your first name, or I am not currently writing as Jamie Farrell. And I'm not opposed to going back to it, but it needs to be a story that's speaking to me so loudly in the Jamie verse versus a story that's speaking to me so loudly in the Pippa verse. And it comes down to my husband said to me one time, I was I was telling him that I felt bad because I I get a lot of messages on Facebook and I can't reply to every single one of them and keep up with the writing pace that I have and also keep up with my family and my kids' commitments. And he said, you have to think about the needs of the many versus the needs of the few. And the needs like you will make so many more people happy if you take that hour or two hours that you would be responding individually to people in email and on messages, and use those hours to write another book.

SPEAKER_06 42:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 42:48

And so it's hard. I like connecting with people, I like connecting with fans. Um, but sometimes I just can't reply to all of that. And as long as it's not a Facebook message, I can have my assistant reply so they're getting a response, and that that makes me feel better knowing that they know that the Pippa Grant team has gotten their message and it's been passed on. And odds are good I see it. Um, but it's hard. Right. Yeah, it is, it's hard.

Jami 43:18

Speaking of your husband, though, real quick, is he part of your team now or are you He is part of my team? And you know I thought you I thought you were transitioning to that.

SPEAKER_04 43:27

Well, he we're working on it. It's hard always. Um, you know, I'll tell you a story about my husband. We travel a lot, we have family scattered as close as six hours away and as far away as like 14 hours by car. No, further, 20 hours. So our our family is scattered from like the Midwest to the West. And so we're in the car a lot when we go see people. And we went to a family wedding in Kansas this fall, and we were driving home, and our new car was it it's A used car, but we we bought a new to us car, right? And it's so fancy, it has all these bells and whistles, and we got 10 miles down the road outside of Kansas on our way back home and like a 13-hour trip, and all of a sudden, all the warning lights go off. Oh no, there's something wrong with our car on a Sunday. So we pull over to there, so there's no dealerships open, there's no maintenance shops open. So we go to like an auto zone and they told us what the codes meant, but our car wasn't shutting down, and I was researching it online, and I was sitting there and I was fuming for most of the day because we're driving, the kids are tired, I'm tired, and I'm like, this sucks. We're never driving this far again in a single day. We're never taking road trips again. Like we can afford to fly places, we're going to fly if we have to go. So at hour 11 in our 13 hours, my husband looks at me and he says, So what are you working on right now? And I started talking to him, and the next thing you know, like I am dying laughing as he's describing to me exactly what I need to put as the opening to my next book. And you know what? That is the opening to the book that I turned in this morning. So my husband, he he bounces ideas off me. Sometimes it takes 12 hours in a car to get there, or I bounce ideas off him. Um, he's always been the first one who will say things like, Well, if your Facebook ads are going well, why don't you up the spending? Um he likes the marketing ideas, the book ideas, the audience ideas, everything. I bounce it off of him. And so I brought him onto my team and he's working part-time on a few other like secret projects. We'll talk about sometime later this year, too. So that's yeah, it's been it's really good though. Um, his his career, he's in the military, his career. Um he has a couple years to go, but we don't know how long he's gonna stay in after being retirement eligible.

SPEAKER_03 45:43

So that's a very good thing. So then he has a good transition, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:47

Yeah, and that's right, Jamie. You met him because you were you were at Nink in the call. And oh Sarah, you met him too. We were both there. Yeah.

Jami 45:54

It's a big party. We had a great time. It's a big party. It was it was a good time.

SPEAKER_04 45:58

Yeah, yeah, and he enjoyed it and he got to see a whole lot more about the business just for being at Nink. Yeah.

Jami 46:03

Yeah, that's a that's a great uh learning field right there, you know.

SPEAKER_06 46:07

Yeah, yeah.

Jami 46:09

So uh what changes have you seen in your genre over the course of your author career and how have you adapted? I think you've answered that, but go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 46:17

Oh, but you know, I've been I've been writing for like 17 years or so, and it's funny because back when I was first writing and querying, there was so much advice given to authors that's just totally not relevant now. Right. Like first person point of view used to be the kiss of death. You could not query a first-person project in romance that just wasn't gonna work. But just like over the span of my career, I've seen it go from the traditional published to the indie published, and Sarah, I know you have too. And it's it's amazing the difference between you have to get past the gatekeepers to the readers themselves or the gatekeepers. So as long as you write a book that will keep them engaged and make them want your next book, and you have a method of getting to them to let them know you have a book out, like it's just it's totally different. It's amazing. I love it. And you can do anything. I mean, Chuck Tingle has a has a career. You can do anything.

Sara 47:12

It's like it's this, it's this awesome freedom that you know, like I did not I'm like you, when it first changed and I became an indie author, I was like, this is amazing. Like just, you know, you could just write anything. But since then I've kind of learned sort of the same way you have that like if I kind of angle my books to a certain direction, I'll do better, you know? And so it's like I feel like we have this great freedom, but you know, it's like sometimes it's almost overwhelming.

SPEAKER_04 47:39

Like and with great freedom comes great responsibility.

unknown 47:44

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:47

You have to remember the fans. Exactly. That's what, yeah. Yes, at the end of the day, like at the end of the day, if you're not making your fans happy, that what will determine. Yeah. Like it's not about an editor got mad at me. And I was never traditionally published. I was querying Southern Fried Blues, which is the book of my heart. Um best title ever. I love it. Yeah, I was querying that when Fifty Shades was hitting big. And so my rejections all took the form of this is amazing and awesome, and we love it, and we can't take it because it's like quirky and funny and light, and it's not the next 50 shades of right time. Yeah. Yeah. And I said, well, if it's good enough, then I'm gonna do it myself, and I don't care if it takes several years for it to pay off. Right. And it did. But it did pay off. Yeah. Yes. I mean, really, like tenacity, I think, is the one thing that makes like tenacity makes more difference than anything else. Yeah.

Jami 48:39

Being able to get above your knees is is the biggest, biggest thing.

SPEAKER_04 48:43

And this is the summer that I became Pippa Grant was the summer I almost quit writing. Yeah. Yeah. Like I was taking a good hard long look in the mirror and saying, I am either going to do this exclusively for fun or I'm going to try something that will make this an actual career and not something that the IRS is going to be like, nope, you can't write that off anymore because you're not making any money.

unknown 49:04

Exactly.

Sara 49:06

Well, so that kind of blends into our last question. What's the best thing you've done to set yourself up for success in your career? Was it changing to a new name or something like that?

SPEAKER_04 49:15

It was changing to a new name, but in a lot of ways it was letting go of the fear. Yeah. And letting myself do what I wanted to do because I don't have that little voice sitting on, and I do to a point, it's coming back. I can hear it. But when I was writing my first PIP of books, I was able to completely shut off that voice that says an editor wouldn't like this, your mom would be offended by this, because I knew I wasn't writing for them. I was writing for the people who wanted to read the books that I wanted to write. Right.

SPEAKER_06 49:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:44

Like if I if I run into somebody on the street and they say, What did you do? And I say, I'm a self-published author, they say, I want to write a book, but I'm afraid that nobody would want to read it. I'm like, if you want to write it, somebody wants to read it. Because while we're all different, there are certain things that appeal to all of us in humanity. Right. And there are people out there who want to read every book. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 50:06

That's awesome. So Pippa, where can people find you? Um, usually I am hiding and writing. No. I didn't mean literally. Virtually.

SPEAKER_04 50:18

Like virtu in the virtual world. Yes. Um, my website is www.pippa grant.com and um pippa with three Ps, P-I-P-P-A, Grant, G-R-A-N-T.com. Um, I'm on Facebook. I sometimes go on Twitter. I have an Instagram account that I might update. It's all on my website. All the links are there. Um, I have the funniest newsletter in the history of newsletters. It goes on.

Jami 50:45

Yes, I can I can vouch for that.

SPEAKER_04 50:49

Is it called the Pipster? It's called the Pipster Report.

Sara 50:53

Yes, I thought that was an awesome name.

SPEAKER_04 50:55

Yeah. Um, that's one of the things that I planned. Like I the PG thing where my initials are PG and my books are not, was totally an accident. But the Pipster Report, my fan group on Facebook is called the Pip Squad. And you know, it's all about fun and bringing a smile to somebody. And whether it's my Facebook group, Facebook is my jam, it's where I operate best, that's where I hang out. Like other people have other social media sites that they like well, but that one's mine. Um, and yeah, it is. It's all about the fun, the smiles, the happiness, escaping the real world, whether it's the newsletter, the fan group, or anything else that I do out there.

Jami 51:34

And you we can find all your books on Amazon right now. You can find all my books on Amazon. All right, very good. Yep. Very good. Well, thanks for being with us today.

SPEAKER_04 51:43

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Sara 51:45

Thanks for talking to us.

SPEAKER_04 51:46

It's my pleasure.

Sara 51:47

It was great to talk to you.

SPEAKER_04 51:49

Have a good weekend. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 51:52

Thanks for listening to the Wish I've Known Men podcast. We hope this episode inspired you, empowered you, and made you laugh a little bit too. If you loved it, tell your friends about it. And if you feel so inclined, leave us a review. We look forward to being with you again next week.